Walking on the Moon

I’ve been reading some Space Operas lately that I liked to varying degrees and for various reasons. These three books are a Space Opera trilogy from John Scalzi. This is what I want from a Space Opera.

This is just fun from start to finish. We open in media res of a mutiny and don’t slow down appreciably for 3 books. The world gets built up around us as an unlikely ruler ascends to the galactic throne and faces an unprecedented threat. We meet the rest of our protagonists and villains while barely catching our breath. It’s a hoot.

There’s just enough meat on the bones to make it serious, both for internal stakes and to spark ideas outside the story. The characters are archetypes animated with a breath of life. They change across the novels in interesting and believable ways. The plot twists are believable and frequent. Like I say, great fun.

In fact, I was having so much fun that I was a book and a half in before I noticed that the usual gender ratio for this kind of story was completely reversed. And, thinking about it, no character had any of their appearance described. Huh. Go figure.

Strongly recommended.

I like the idea of Paperback LA. Los Angeles is a big place and people see it different ways. Susan LaTempa wants to lay some breadcrumbs down for people who want to explore the place through media. Mostly prose though she does also include photo essays and such.

It’s an impossible task. And she knows it, but is willing to take a swing anyway. And like I say, I like the idea. I just think her tastes and mine aren’t quite in line. It was nice to revisit The Sellout again, though.

I’ve been poking at some horror lately, with kind of mixed results. I’m admittedly hard to creep out, especially by writing – though it has happened. The Haunting of Hill House didn’t make me jump, but I couldn’t look away, either. I was drawn to it because Jeffery Cranor on Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9 praised the first paragraph of the novel. When a writer I respect remembers a particular paragraph from a novel, it seems worth a look.

It is a remarkable paragraph, but not just because it’s a sculpted piece of prose. It acts as the keystone that makes the rest of the novel the eerie mystery driven by the characters drawn into Hill House that it is. It sets the tone and rhythms of the environment that these characters are going into. They will make their own rhythms and they will combine into different combinations, but they are all riding that first paragraph’s beats. It basically does the work of the prologue to Church of Dead Girls in one paragraph. Remarkable.

None of that happens without Jackson structuring everything that goes on, and I love seeing that kind of stuff, but she does it so deftly that it only emerges on reflection. While I was reading it, it was a spooky story with interesting characters.

When I read The Turn of the Screw, I found the subtext inaccessible. I found the things left unsaid by Jackson much easier to hear. That may be because she’s writing closer in time than James, but I don’t think so.

Basically I found Haunting gripping, spooky, character driven, and fun to think about.

Strongly recommended.